Like A Tigress
by GraceEliz
Summary: The discovery isn't distressing. No, she's lying, it is. Effie does what she does best and plans, plans, plans, and it doesn't matter if Haymitch doesn't want them. She's having this baby.
1. For all her faults, she's a steel trap

_I was very very taken by an obscure fic idea, so here we are: a mostly angsty canon compliant Hayffie AU. _

_Tags: Hayffie, unexpected pregnancies, angst, fashion design, the hunger games, so on and so forth._

It takes Effie all of three weeks to realise that something is very, very wrong. She feels sick all the time, like seasickness, and the headache hasn't faded since Hay- since HE woke her up when he had to leave the house. The smell of her favourite dessert makes her gag, the mere notion of alcohol makes her queasy. Even Ha- even He has noticed that she's off colour, and He took her arm and pulled her gently away (why so gentle, now? You weren't then, when you threw me out in the cold rain) to have her taken home. The offer of a hospital or even a medical orderly visiting her at home is brushed off, Effie doesn't think she's that sick. It's just bad food and stress. That's all. He threw her out, just as she was starting to believe in love again, and all this sickness is just – stress related.

To her credit, she doesn't slap the man when he visits to check up on her a few hours later, even though he doesn't deserve her time after bruising her fragile heart so badly when they last spoke. She is truly grateful he covered for her at the event, last event of the season for them both. District 12 didn't win, and even though he is still hugely famous they'll be allowed to go back and sink out of the limelight. Effie knows how much holiday she's owed. It's a lot. He tells her they're allowed to go tomorrow, so she should start to pack or at the very least leave instructions for her things to be sent on. After all, doesn't she have a large posh house in 12?

Yes.

And won't she be happier recovering there?

Maybe.

She should visit a medic.

Effie agrees with him that she will, tomorrow, just in case she really is sickening with something.

Does she want him to stay?

No.

He doesn't want to sleep with her, God, she's sick anyway, but maybe if he just –

No. She wants to be alone.

Why does it hurt her so much to let him back reluctantly away and draw the door closed behind him? He threw her out, into the rain and the cold of all things, and he told her he doesn't actually care about her which is cruel, so cruel, especially after she'd hesitantly expressed her hope that he was happy in the arrangement. Sorrow is for funerals and grief is for the Games, not for watching him lope away on a frigid night after a rubbish party full of food she can't stand anymore. All those pregnant women who can't have their favourite –

Oh. Well, that's a distressing possibility to be confronted with. Effie stops dead on her way to the bathroom, staring sightlessly at the poster of herself in her first ever Capitol debut. How long has it been? Months, certainly. Biologically she should be incapable of conceiving, given her lifestyle but she did run out of pills for a whole week and that night with Hay- with HIM was on the second day of that week, so that's six days for the – embryo – or whatever to take. She needs to get hold of a handful of pregnancy tests.

Be logical. Don't panic yet. Over all of this, don't let him find out. He won't like it, won't want it, and Effie knows she can't cope with him turning her and her baby away. Would it be so bad? To have a link, a child, to cherish and adore and raise, that wouldn't be so bad. Deep inside Effie knows he will never take her side, not now and not ever. She's still so very alone even with the bean inside her.

Oh, damn.

Maternal attachment is only meant to start when there's actually a baby, right? Is this proof she's pregnant or is her romantic side running away with her? Well, she isn't going to find out by standing around here in impractical clothing and another hideous pair of stilettos. Whoever chose these has no taste whatsoever. Without the wig, outlandish clothing and layered makeup she'll be essentially incognito on her late night shopping trip. Perfect.

Obtaining the kits is a doddle. Effie walks in, pays cash, and walks out of the corner shop with three tests. She'll do them half an hour apart, or something, and look at them all at the same time. Shrouded in anonymity as she travels, the walk is much more enjoyable than it's ever been before. That may have something to do with her flat boots cushioning her feet: wearing heels tomorrow will be torture. At least on the train Haymi- HE won't be judging her appearance or calculating the worth of her shoes and the chances she has of catching one of this season's bachelors.

The lock clicks satisfactorily under her hand when she lets herself in. So many homes in the Capitol have fancy electric locks now, but Effie is not the rich silly society bint she looks like and she knows full well that as the saying goes analogue is safer than digital. In fact, she has a multitude of certificates and a degree in HR to prove her intelligence should anyone bother to look past the masquerade and see her. He never asks her about her academic achievements, because it never occurs to him that she would want to talk about it. If she was less clever she wouldn't be stuck working with a broken victor of the awful Games.

The Games. She can't cover the Games as she usually does if she's pregnant and how can she raise a child? Her, Effie Trinket, the chooser of the names, hated by her district, disrespected by most people, a tool for the Capitol? The poor babe would suffer so much at her side. It would be horribly unfair. The old sofa welcomes her into its folds like a hug or an old friend, and she relaxes into the plushness of it to think. Giving the child up would be so painful, but what if she arranged it so the child went to a decent 12 family, a deal whereby she had visiting rights and could have time with her son or daughter. The problem with that would be that he also lives in 12, around the corner down the street from her, but it's unlikely he'll ever be sober enough to see the child with her and do the necessary maths. Of course if he does he'll assume she had an affair and a child and kept it and then he'll hate her and shatter her soul, but he's an alcoholic with PTSD. It'll be fine. She has a Media Control and Human Reactions degree at the highest level from the harshest University in the land. It will be nothing she can't handle. Just another orange in the fruit basket of details she juggles daily that nobody notices or respects her for.

The newly adulted are allowed to be bitter. She's 22, disillusioned and barely a year out of studying (Hamish Abernathy was her 'residency' project and the higher on ups gave him her as a job. Life is bad, kids, die young and save yourself the pain.)

Barely any effort is required for the tests, which she suspects is part of the design, considering that the street she bought them on also serves the red light district with all its depravity and poverty. There's no money in prostitution, not it a city this liberal and corrupt. Per the suggestions on the box she takes one every hour, and uses the intervening time to pack the necessities for making the move to 12 and forming arguments on the topic of her holidays owed. Her diaries reckon she's got seven months, but there was the incident with the President she covered two years ago so she has a month for that, and then maybe she can claim her sick too and get another month for it. That's nine.

She'll take a month even if she isn't pregnant.

The tests are ready well before she finishes packing, two overstated suitcases of fancy clothes and an understated duffle bag that had once been her mother's full of her plain outfits. If she has to pack any more pairs of heels she is going to cry, especially if they're over three inches. Pregnant women shouldn't be wearing heels at any point but there's no way for her to argue a nine-month leave in under four weeks; she'll have to hope she doesn't start showing before she can get the hell out of dodge.

The little sticks, when she drums her courage to the fore, display the little purple squiggle (is it meant to be the line of a heartbeat? Maybe) that means a positive test. For whatever reason, Effie can't make herself be distressed about the confirmation. She has options still, should she choose to terminate, and options for after the birth. Even if she keeps the child to raise she will be alright, given the popularity of her skills amongst the fashion businesses of One and Eight. Even if the Capitol cuts her from society – perhaps even especially – there are at least ten people who would pay her anything she asked, and if her price was anonymity for her and her son or daughter, well, Effie rather thinks she'd get it without much argument.

The next step she needs to take is to talk to a trusted medical professional, such as the one who owes her several favours for the media control she did after a drug scandal that leaked out of one of the Capitol's elitist hospitals. He will help her organise natal care and the future of her child, and in return she'll drop words about his skills to aid his promotion (people think she doesn't know, but the underground network is huge and loyal to the money Effie provides with the little jobs she requires doing. That's a job for tomorrow, though, not tonight. She tucks the tests into her duffle, sets the alarm for five hours so she can sneak out to catch him early, settles into bed and falls asleep as fast as ever.


	2. A Year Spent in Dreaming

Twelve is grim, to say the very least. She spends three weeks floating through the mercantile and Victor's settlements in her Capitol-style dresses and wigs and heels pursued by film crews and reporters and the hatred of the District's inhabitants, trying to ignore the ever-increasing sickness and pressure of her corsets on her stomach. It's not like he's going to notice she's looser laced even on the odd days he stays mostly sober, and when her time is up she's leaving for Three to spend four days reviewing one of the tech company's marketing measures. One of the textile producers in Eight is offering her a year-long job with accommodation, and that isn't quite what she wants, but it's better than she has been expecting to get considering the reaction of the Capitol to her holiday request.

The doctor who owed her helps her write up the forms in a way that combines her own skill with human reactions and intimidating official medical jargon, and he is her connection to the ongoing argument within the hubbub of Capitol politics. Apparently she's got her month of sick leave, but they don't want to give her a long block of leave – especially as much as eight months. This is no obstacle: Effie still has a couple of scandals in her arsenal, despite the Capitol smugly assuming she's used all the blackmail she possesses, and she sends several messages indicating that should her requests be ignored or brushed off, she is ready to quit being an official Escort in favour of pursuing the ever more attractive jobs in the fashion industry businesses keep offering her.

That should shut them up long enough to make them think over their responses.

Another process she sets into motion during her stay in Twelve is remotely discussing her natal care options. She refuses to stay in the Capitol at the best hospitals, refuses to run the risk of being known and having to invent an explanation that won't destroy her and him both, and not even her nightmares of loss and pain and the recurring one which is nothing but the sensation of screaming, leaving her sobbing when she wakes, can convince her. There are two hospitals in Three she likes, has always liked, and one birthing-home in One that would do in a pinch. It's just a little too near the Capitol, is favoured by the socialites who think they are oh-so-perfect and even worse think they're so intelligent just by merit of being rich. Yeah. Effie rolls her eyes at the thought of their tittering gossip grating on her nerves in a confined space without even being able to shock them into quiet with her degree certificates. One of Three's hospitals it is, then, somewhere far away enough that she won't be recognised in her plain clothes, somewhere that won't care all that much about a only-recently-in-uni disaster of an adult who made a mistake and wants to hide away.

Mistake. Is this baby a mistake? An accident, certainly, but to call the bean inside her, this six-week-old seed of a human, a 'mistake' twinges painfully in the region of her heart. No woman should call her baby a mistake, not to anyone but her own darkness, never in any circumstance call the child 'mistake' where they can hear. Effie remembers her father calling her a mistake, a waste, nothing, and hopes he knows how far she's come without him.

Her days pass here as they always do at the tail end of Games season, stress and resentment and the mask of bubbling optimism which nobody ever looks at long enough to see through. Except him, who doesn't count, because now he's home he doesn't even try to make himself presentable, drowning in his trauma and grief and cheap alcohol, unable to even focus his eyes on her, much less see the secret she harbours under kaleidoscope layers of silk, satin, frills. She's safe enough.

The triad of tests remain tucked into a secret pocket of her old duffle, under the soft leggings and old leather boots, safe from prying eyes and the bribing of her meagre staff. They're proof of the bean's existence, more than nausea and the growing firmness of her lower belly. If she let him touch her, would he feel it? Would he make a comment? If she starts showing before she left he probably wouldn't bother investing even if he noticed. After all, he'd made it very clear he had only been sleeping with her because she wasn't afraid of his roughness, nightmares, coarse manners, and he found her attractive under all her ridiculous layers of makeup. Not that Effie is at all bitter or slightly heartbroken, she muses bitterly as she pulls on the black boots over leggings under a silvered grey dress. She's outlined her eyes in gold and silver and dug out blood-red lipstick and a deep red wig, so that if the press are still here she still wears the image she's spent – what will it be now? Five years, almost, spent building up her image of the bright bubbly Capitol darling who never gives up. The wire fences aren't electrified, and she remembers that he took her up through the forest to a waterfall last year on one of his sobriety stretches. That's another lost thing, his attempts to draw his life back together into some semblance of the man he used to be. Effie remembers his Games as long months of sighing and a serious crush on the well-built tribute from Twelve who outsmarted and more to the point outlasted every other contestant despite every odd. She has a lot of respect for what he's survived and what he struggles with now, truly, but it's hard to be sympathetic to the man who threw her to the street and expected her not to be upset.

Her pregnancy seems to be already messing up her meticulous thought processes, her methods of only thinking about the most important details, progressing logically from point to point. She should be focussing on the route to the falls yet here she sits with one boot on, no nearer her goal of seeing the wildness outside of Panem's boundaries one last time before leaving for Eight to start on a six-month marketing overhaul for one of the older textile companies.

Boots on, Effie leaves the house and starts her trek up the back lane to the Victor's settlement. There are ten or twelve houses, only one of which is occupied – by the very man she's attempting to avoid extended extra-social interaction with. It is so easy to fall into imagining raising the child with him, even picturing herself quitting Escorting to have a family. There are precedents which would permit the endeavour, arguments she knows she can sell to the public to force the Capitol to let her out, press members who drink up her every interview and would be on her side in any argument. In any case, this is what her degree is in. The ragged houses loom up ahead of her, and Effie rambles to a halt on the simple gravelled track as she wonders at herself.

Is she truly considering going in to his house and letting him work her sacred secret out?

Truly?

Truly, no, she is not. No matter how much Effie craves his presence, his comfort, his hands in her own, she cannot have it, can't afford to be thrown away or for him to cause a scene over it. Unplanned pregnancies have caused too much distress to too many public figures over even the years Effie has worked in HR for her to permit herself to become another part of the statistic of broken women.

Effie strides past his house.

The trail leads up to a pretty clearing, about an acre, dense with wildflowers and ringed in edible berry bushes. For those who know where – and how – to look there is a deer track twining up between the pines to the fence, and past that to the Falls. As far as she knows there's no name for them in either the local villages or Capitol maps. It would be useful, she considers as she tracks the deer prints through the dried mud, for her son or daughter to be rather close to their father, in order to gather the necessary skills needed to survive in the ever more stringent state. Even more useful on the off chance that it was their name chosen – would she one day stand on the podium and read out the name Trinket? Would it be a name altogether unrelated that only she would recognise? If it comes to that, she isn't sure she could stand the pain of it, stand up in front of the cameras and send her child into the horrors of the Games. Suppressing a shiver, she presses harder up the slope to the fence. Perhaps if she exhausts herself she'll be able to sleep.

The three month mark arrives whilst she's six weeks into her current five-month project in Eight, wrapping up the first stage of the marketing campaign; it is of course aimed at the Capitol, singing the praises of the reliable sourcing and ethical production methods of the new bright fabrics. She's used up her first month of sick (they had in fact owed her two) in excellent fashion, lolling around her company flat setting up samples of products and matching materials to prepare for stage two: the opening of the textiles for purchasing to the fashion industries in One. There are a few independent shops in Capitol who'd expressed interest, so she sets aside a few choice limited samples, not to restrict public access but because scarcity raises prices and Effie knows what she can haggle out of the little hand-craft boutiques. Challenge brings out the best of her skills, and absurdity (for surely the Capitol represents absurdity pretty damn well) in the face of challenge even more so. Jaegar, the textile production company who hired her, are quite rightfully expecting to make more money this year than ever before.

Effie is being fabulously reimbursed for her efforts. The flat has five large rooms, as well as kitchen and bathroom, which allows her to have one room as a wardrobe, one for sleeping in, one for herself and two for the samples, stocks, patterns, and the copious quantities of notes and sketches the job requires. Monetarily, she can afford the hospital without this job, but having plenty stockpiled in a separate account set up in trust for the baby won't hurt anyone. This is what she's dwelling on as she waits for her three-month consultation.

"Miss Grace?"

A false name, yet one she knows she won't forget: it's how she markets all her fashion designs. Elfaba Grace, the youthful blonde artist who is a demon with a needle, knows her rights better than some lawyers, dresses like a diva, and talks like an actress. Most hostels, homes, and clinics don't question falsities or discrepancies in the paperwork too hard at these early stages – everyone knows that each District has its own methods of erasing the problem of childbirth, even at this point. The nurse sets down a mug of tea and plate of the little oaty snacks so popular in Eight, the ones she still isn't positive she actually likes what with how they get stuck in her teeth, before taking her own seat behind the narrow desk. Shuffling papers, the nurse lets the silence settle.

She smiles up at Effie. "Good afternoon, Miss Grace. My name is Lora Carter, and I'll be your attached nurse whilst you're with us. We'll get you scanned and then discuss your natal care – it's correct that you intend to have the child in Three?" She nods in confirmation, throat oddly tight. "Good, good. They have some of the best hospitals," says Lora Carter, "Let's get baby scanned."

Scanner gel – obviously there's a proper name, but that would feel too much like intention to keep the baby and Effie knows, despite how much it hurts, that she can't keep this baby – is far less uncomfortable than she was expecting. Generously, the nurses allow her to hold the instrument and watch the floating bean inside her. The bump is easily hidden under the flowing day dresses she's taken to favouring, many of which are part of the new campaign, so she takes this moment in both hands. The bean floats inside her, this is a bean that is a baby that will grow into a child into an adult, all without her –

Effie very quickly starts crying.

Hormones. She could live without these ones, she has to say. A kindly orderly tucks a cluster of tissues into her palm with a gentle smile. "It's so wonderful, isn't it?" she says softly, "Let me know when you're ready to finish in here, you're our last appointment today so we have plenty of time."

"Thank you," she croaks, wiping at her eyes, smiling through the cold hurt in her chest, even as the love of motherhood boils hot in her heart. How much will it hurt her to let the baby go? How will she ever be able to see the child grow up in stages without her there for the first step, first word, first young love?

There has to be a way she can have insights, involvement. There are several options for visitation, she's read, but it's all very dependent on the foster parents' feelings which Effie doesn't think is very fair. Those who live in the Capitol are known to buy small children and babies to raise as their own, with no knowledge of their births and no option for the parents to visit or know anything beyond the name of the babe. It's cold, unfeeling, just like the Capitol itself.

After another five minutes, the gel is tacky and uncomfortable, so she reluctantly allows the nurse to clean it up and switch off the monitor and lead her back to the small office where Lora Carter is waiting. Effie quietly fills in some more paperwork, distracted by the memory of the grainy grey scanner image of the tiny human inside her. The morning sickness seems to be finally tapering off into lingering headaches behind her eyes, nothing she can't work through with a pair of sunglasses but persistent enough to make her want to cry some days. Lora Carter taps away at her keyboard, making her own notes on various papers with a pen plucked from behind her ear, doctorish scrawl spreading like spiders' tracks over the pages.

"If you want, we can print two copies of the scan image." Effie looks up in surprise from filling in the 'symptom' chart of the second page; she hadn't expected a physical copy of the image. "That way there is one for you, and one for the father."

"Oh," says Effie quickly, "I don't think he'll want it. I'll take one though, for the future. Maybe – well." Even to her own ears she is bitter and cynical, a woman left. Lora Carter hums, offering no comments, no judgement in her tone, tapping away. In the ensuing Effie turns back to her papers, getting distracted by the material of the nurses' overalls, mind springing off into images of practical dress outfits for on-call responders. There had been a high-ranking neurosurgeon two years ago who'd carried out a seven-hour surgery in a green ballgown. Effie had designed her a dress which looked complicated to the untrained eye yet could be removed within three minutes by the wearer, and two minutes flat if they had an assistant to unzip the skirt. Yes, looks like she can corner the market regarding practical dress clothing.

The same orderly who'd run her scan enters the room with a cursory tap to the door, handing Effie a pair of grey envelopes labelled "E. Grace", nondescript and nonthreatening. Easy to hide among her designs and scraps in the temporary flat if anyone comes looking for her from the Capitol or even Twelve. With a final flourished signature – Elfaba Grace T – she hands the stapled wad of paperwork across the desk. It's not final, which is what she had expected, but rather she is left with a sense of budding anticipation, of new horizons, exactly how she felt when she started her first assignment.

The rest of the visit passes in confirming her contact details and arranging a return in four weeks, with contacts arranged for the hospital in Three. Effie is staring in elation at her photo, the little son or daughter – she'd like a son – without moving from her bed until after midnight. She's going to pin it to her bedroom mirror, tomorrow. Tonight she's letting the peace and love in her heart send her straight to sleep.


	3. His name is non-negotiable

The new place is much smaller: a single largish room, bathroom, and tiny kitchen. It is sufficient for one woman, on the ground floor in respect to her advanced pregnancy, the bed screened from the rest of her workspace by her corkboard displays of fabric samples, patterns, photographs. It isn't that she is bothered by the drastic downsizing, but her studio is no longer a part of her living space. There's space for a small studio area, yes, but her HR work hasn't abated in all her months away. The name Effie Trinket is still a strong one in the courts and legal offices of the Capitol, just as strong as the invisible Elfaba Grace in the world of fashion. It is almost a miracle she has kept her two 'selves' separate this long, but nobody looks deeper than Effie's outfit and over-bright smile long enough to suspect her true appearance. As Elfaba Grace – shortened to Effie – she wears no wig, little makeup, the somewhat understated practical outfits that remind her she isn't a Capitol puppet but her own woman. It's less emotionally exhausting, being the Human Responses and Fashion Guru who gets to work with a private team in a private space.

Of course there's no way anyone suspects Effie Trinket is pregnant. The gossip tabloids get delivered to her door, as per request, and she set the TV to automatically record talk shows and interviews. Eyeing her finally unpacked collection of legal documents spread over the desks, floor, and even pinned on the walls, she decides that is more than enough energy for a woman who is due to give birth imminently. Sorted into "immediate", "long term" and "dear god give this job to someone else", her living area looks more like an itinerant businesswoman's office than private quarters.

Pulling herself slowly and carefully to her feet, Effie treads the paths between box and paper to her kitchenette. She's craving fish and beans, and crusty bread rolls. And, strangely, the peculiar sauce she had several years ago made of exotic fruits. Where can she find some? Capitol, maybe. "Exotic fruit" goes on the bottom of her shopping wishlist.

Effie moves into the hospital when her water breaks and not a single day before. The cramps come early in the morning, startling her awake in her bedsit, sheets sodden. Practical and efficient to the bone, she sets the sheets to wash, winds a towel around her waist, picks up the beloved old duffle bag. "Come on, baby," she wheezes, patting the bump, "Let's do this, huh?" The hospital answer her call quickly, sending an unlabelled car and paramedic to collect her. Her line of practical dress clothing is due to launch in a month, at the end of this year's Games. The Escort for Twelve this year was a gangling young man with skin the shade of nightshade and nowhere near Effie's skill at controlling Hamish, leading to many embarrassing incidents that she watched with morbid horror, unable to turn away but too mortified to acknowledge in public.

Thankfully, part of her agreement with the hospital is their silence on her presence there, now and forever, in return for discounted products. There is no way to avoid scandal if news of Effie Trinket the Twelve Escort giving birth in secrecy in a small very private hospital in Three gets out.

She is checked in quickly with no fuss, settles easily into her small private room.

"Okay, just fill this out. It's for the birth certificate."

Effie accepts the bundle of papers off the midwife, resting the board on the swell of her belly. It takes the little details, such as parents' names, but adds the fostering and adoption information clauses too such as 'willingness to contribute to care' and 'visitation requests'.

"What should we call you whilst you're in?" she inquires, "We do want you to be comfortable."

"Effie. Everyone calls me that."

The midwife smiles, young cheeks wrinkling. Her smile lines are even deeper than Effie's own, possibly due to the strict skin routine Effie holds herself to, a necessary strife to prevent the heckling of the Capitol over wrinkles or rough skin. "Is that short for Euphemia?" the young woman asks as she fluffs the cushions at Effie's back, gracefully efficient.

"Elfaba, actually. Elfaba Grace Trinket. I'm from the Capitol, and my mother came from a slightly better family. My father, well." She smiles ruefully into the past. "I hope he can see how far I've come. I'm not usually anonymous, not like this."

"I think you do wonderful things, Ms. Trinket," says the midwife as she turns away, "Nobody chooses to be an Escort, I know that, and your new range – Dress Practical? It's marvellous." Smiling, she looks back a final time before leaving the room. "We don't hold people's jobs against them. We hold people to themselves."

Gobsmacked, Effie sat sits stunned with her mouth open for another ten minutes. To receive that sort of reception is beyond all her imaginings of the last weeks – after all, she is Effie Trinket, the bubbliest of all the Escorts in business, the one who fights everyone to drag her tributes beyond day one, the one who never displays regret over anything.

God but these cramps are agonising.

The day passes too slowly in a haze of passing midwives and occasional painkillers. She thinks of the names she's come up with over the last few months – Peeta, she thinks, for a boy. For a girl, well, she's heard the name Prudence, and she likes Pru, but she used to know a girl with that name who was the bane of university. Maybe she'll think of something in the moment.

She doesn't remember the birth itself, afterwards, holding the tight bundle of lavender-pale blankets tight to her chest. This is her son, a tiny human who is half her and half the love of her life, who for his own sake she must give away as if she never had a son, never carried this living breathing child in her, never felt the pull of love on her heart. It hurts, oh so much. Peeta. Her little boy whose name means bread, or life, or hope. There is an ancient prayer – "give to us our daily bread". That is where his name comes from, should he want to know in the future, but Peeta is an easy enough name to blend into the background of District 12.

The smiling nurse comes to collect the papers, eyes warm in response to Effie's overt affection towards her newborn son – her son! Had she the energy, she'd wriggle in ecstatic glee.

"Did you choose a name, then?"

"Yes. Peeta Hayket, which is to be his middle name when he's – adopted."

The nurse pays her shoulder sympathetically. "He'll take to you like a duck to water," she says, "they nearly always do."


	4. Small but mighty, have you met him?

"She's just a Capitol whore," sneers Cole, "They tell her every move to make and she just leaps to it." Peeta glares in fury, knowing his reputation of not standing for bullies won't quite get him through fighting in defense for the woman most of the district consider to be a harbinger of evil, a Capitol puppet, gleeful on her strings. It is not fair.

Another boy laughs cruelly. Tall, strong, older than Peeta by four years, not someone he can take in a fight. Not in a fair fight at any rate – but that's okay. Mum always tells him to fight dirty when he has to. And hey, if he gets in deep enough, Gale and Katniss might come join in.

"Shut up."

"Oh yeah? Or what, little merch boy?"

Snarling makes him look wild, more feral than even Katniss, so he hardens his eyes as mum taught him and leaps, full weight, on the hardest of the bullies.

The thing is, he grins as they hit the wet mud, that people laugh at him for working in the bakery so young but they never look deep enough for long enough and they don't know any of the weights he can lift, which is his advantage. Slamming the heel of his hand into the tall boy's nose – maybe he's called Nic? – Peeta picks himself up from his perch on the bully's stomach and hurls himself at Cole.

"It isn't kind to be a bully, Cole," he hisses. The fight doesn't truly get started, no more than two hits in each, before his mother comes running from the bakery like the furies his mum once told him about. Damn. Now they're in trouble.

"Peeta Mellark, get out of the dirt right now."

"Mother, listen," he starts as he lurches to his feet, "I had cause, okay – "

She throws up a hand, eyes cold and hard. "I don't care if he was being cruel about someone, do not get into fights." He drops his head, resigned. "Go inside. There's work to do.

And as for you, Cole Marner, I'll be having words with your father. I don't doubt he'll be utterly furious with you."

Her skirts snap around her legs as she stalks across the dusty courtyard back inside the bakery. Closing the door after she sweeps past him through the shop into the kitchen, eyes still on Cole and the collected bullies, Peeta thinks that his mothers have a lot more in common than they'd like to accept. The wall-rota says he only has four hours to do, then he's (hopefully) free to go see his mum. She's living in the Victor's Village at present, on the opposite street to Haymitch and four houses down, relying on Haymitch's innate secrecy and downright grumpiness to convince him to keep their friendship quiet. None of the kids in the village know Peeta likes to spend his time with the famous escort – nor that he's inherited her artistic talent. He has his own corner of her studio for painting; whilst she works on her patterns, ready for her annual fashion parades, Peeta puts into paint the things he can't express at home: Katniss under a ray of sun, small children cradled in a mother's loving arms, the emptiness of Haymitch's house.

"Peeta," says his father from the oven.

"I hate them," he hisses violently, taking his place kneading dough, "The things they say, I hate them."

His father hums, the noise meaning Peeta should put the anger to use and make a start kneading bread. Rough under his hands, the dough tears and slides, echoing the slow slide from anger to superficial calm in Peeta himself. After fifteen minutes, the dough rolls smooth and warm with each push-fold-push-fold-spin, ready to be sliced into quarters and rolled into cobs for rising. The trays need swapped, three stages in process at any time in this undersized kitchen. He switches trays in the ovens, knocking back the first-risen, then a quick kneading of the second-risen, and finally putting the ready dough in the oven for cooking. It's hard labour, always, for all involved in the bakery. Weighing out new batch ingredients, he muses on the charts for cakes and decorations in the back hall. A wedding cake for a rich merchant, a few small birthday cakes, a set of pastries for a promising. Kavi is sick this week, and so all of these are on Peeta's list. If the ingredients are weighed, he can set the cake for overnight, get up before dawn to cool the cake and prepare the pastry fillings, set the icing to develop whilst he's at school. That should free up a couple hours immediately after school, so he can trail up for one of his 'walks' in the woods. Mum will want to spend as much time as possible before she leaves again for this year's Games.

"Can I go, after I finish?" he asks. Better to ask his father than his mother – she's becoming bitter, as years slide by. The answering hummed yes is the most he can expect from the man currently painting miniscule butterflies onto a birth-cake. "Leave the back door open, then."

"Take her the leftover pastries. And the man, too," remarks his father. Peeta smiles – maybe his father isn't his biologically, but he can't think of a kinder man to imitate.

The little card boxes are useful for ferrying his little gifts to mum and Haymitch, and useful for taking day-old bread to the Hub and Katniss. Mother doesn't know what he does with old food, father approves silently. Mum is proud.

"Peeta!" she cries in joy at the sight of her son letting himself in at the door, stabbing her needle into the plush ladybird she uses as a pincushion, "Come in the warmth, don't catch cold." Her nimble hands dance over Peeta's hat and scarf, sneaking in little test-touches to his neck and forehead, checking him over. Of course he lets her, darling boy, always willing to let her satisfy the instinct to protect and care for him.

"I brought you some pastries, you can give some to Haymitch too if he'll eat," he says as he sets the box down on her kitchen table. She bustles about, hanging up his coat, moving a few stacks of felt to make room for him to sit. Her work inevitably leaves a large amount of mess behind, especially here in her 'country home' where she does the bulk of design and development, three rooms full of fabric and thread and needles and patterns on walls. She even knits some things, one offs, or sets of simple useful things when she can't force her focus on whatever current project is draining her attention. Peeta's finger brushes over a half-made lace scarf, and she slaps them away with a mild glare. His grin lights up her whole room.

"What brings you, then?" she asks as he sits at his usual seat, with a view over the back 'garden'. Testing the heat of the kettle on the back of her finger, she sets it to re-heat so she can make the chocolate drink they're both partial too.

"I got into another fight," he says to the tabletop, "They were saying horrible things about you and I hate them."

"It's nothing they haven't said before," she sighs, not turning to face him. Over the years, it has become clear that when he needs to vent something, allowing him this freedom helps. The comforting bubble of the water helps her take deep breaths – in, four, out, four. Showing distress to her son has never been, never will be, acceptable to her; it is her place to worry. Peeta slumps, cheek flat on the paint-stained wood, arms settling angrily by his head. Effie reaches out to run her fingers over his bruised knuckles, slightly floury under her fingers over the red flush from earlier, considering what would be best to say to soothe his pain.

"Would you like to stay the night?"

"I can't," he says muffled by the wood, "there's too much to do."

Effie hums in acknowledgement, eyes on the schedule of deadlines hanging on the pantry door. The red line of the Games draww ever nearer and nearer – boxes and crates of clothes, patterns, materials, line the edges of every room in the house. Under her gentle fingers, Peeta relaxes slowly, melting into the table as his breathing deepens into almost-sleep. She smiles down at him, stroking his hair (her hair, although she keeps hers cut so short he possibly has more hair than her). Personality-wise, he does remind her of his father – and she's sure that in a few years he'll have girls watching him much the way she used to covertly watch Hamish after the games. Peeta has the same nonchalant charm as his father, but his colouring and creative drive is all hers.

"Sleep a while, dearest, and then you can tell me all about it." She hands over the mug of hot chocolate, guiding her son with a hand on his elbow into the study where she does the bulk of her work. Today is dedicated to sewing up the ornate corsets that will debut in a month as part of her Games Season collection. The next few hours passed in soft fabric-noises and Peeta gentle sleep-sounds, pale sunlight filtering through the net curtains, dust motes dancing through the peace.


End file.
